Clockwork
by cliffrose-acetone
Summary: Levi has never quite been all right, and the nightmares of his short time as a soldier don't help. But maybe Eren can. [Modern AU]


Sometimes, Eren comes home and finds Levi asleep with the wall clock under his pillow. The first time he sees it, he takes it out and puts it back on the kitchen wall, wondering why Levi had it in the first place. Eren assumes it's a mistake; maybe he stayed up so long working or cleaning that he ended up wandering into bed with the clock in one hand for some reason. He's still wearing his jeans, Eren notices, and he smiles. He forgets about it.

The next time he's home late (because some sort of crisis occurred which meant that he had to help Sasha finish inking her pages again), Levi has the clock again. Despite the fact that he's obviously been asleep for hours, his hands are still tight around the plastic frame. Eren struggles to pry it from Levi's stiff fingers for at least a minute before he stops. There're deep shadows under Levi's eyes. His clothes are strewn across the floor, making a path from the door to the bed. There are scratches across his forearms that are still a deep, angry red. There's a little blood under his fingernails.

Levi told him before that something was wrong. Being with him wouldn't be easy, he reminded Eren. A lot of people hadn't been up to the task of putting up with it. And Eren had insisted that he wasn't like the others. Once Levi had begun to trust him, Eren saw the pain all over the man's face and couldn't bring himself to just ignore it. Most of the time, Levi was fine, if a little bossy. They had their little arguments, but they always made up afterwards. Being friends before this helped them get along as lovers, he supposed.

He thought he'd know what to do, but he didn't. Eren trusted Levi to know what he was doing all the time, even though he wasn't that much older. He didn't know if he could help Levi at all with whatever problems he had. Eren didn't even know the whole story yet because Levi was so hesitant to give it. And he suddenly felt horribly afraid that he'd fail and become another one of the people who'd given up on the man carving blood out of his arms with his fingernails.

Eren decided to wait that night. It might not have been the best decision, but he couldn't wake Levi then. It took another minute or two the put the clock back where it belonged, and then hours of worrying before Eren could go to sleep himself.

It's a week or so later that it happens again. Levi looks exhausted whenever he's awake, but he brushes it off every time Eren even tries to ask him about it. He brushes off Eren's touches too, and although he knows Levi isn't quite himself, it still hurts. He can see the man collapsing in on himself and there's nothing he can do.

It's a weekend. Saturday, maybe. It was supposed to be a day spent catching up with Armin, but it turned into three hours of Eren worrying loudly about his boyfriend. Armin was such a good friend for listening and not getting annoyed that Eren wants to cry. He'll have to make up for it, Eren thinks, maybe invite him and Jean over so they can see Levi's horrifically terrible video gaming in person. That's always entertaining.

But there's the clock again, on Eren's side of the bed this time, the arms stopped because one of the batteries has popped out. He's actually angry this time because he can't believe he's being replaced with a stupid clock from IKEA or wherever the hell else they got it from (and he can't even remember if it's Levi's or if they bought it together if it was something Mikasa thrust on him for some reason when he started renting his apartment); and he throws the covers back to peel Levi's fingers off it again-

But there scratches are deeper this time and there's less blood under Levi's fingernails and far too much on the sheets.

Eren steps back and a takes a few deep breaths His vision swims. His hip connects painfully with the bedside table before his back hits the wall and he slides down, staring at the the dried stains under Levi's arms. He looks for so long that his vision starts to swim, and then the most awful thought pops into his head that he nearly gags. He can't believe he didn't check before, Jesus Christ, and he scrambles to reach Levi's throat, to press two fingers-

It's there. Eren forces himself to breathe out. It's there under his fingers, slow and heavy and wonderfully reassuring. The cuts aren't that deep after all. Of course they aren't. Of course.

Eren doesn't dare look away after that. He takes off his jacket, and then his jeans because they suddenly can't stand how they feel against his skin, and then he sits on the edge of the bed. He pushes Levi's hair away from his face, curls his fingers around the man's ear. He's so beautiful, Eren thinks, and his heart aches because he's wishing again that he knew what to do so that Levi doesn't feel the way he does.

Eren wakes him , hesitantly, because an awful, selfish part of him wants to avoid this at least until he can figure out what to do. But what will he do if next time turns out to be too late? He can't live with that. He'd never be able to live with that.

Levi wakes up very reluctantly and refuses to open his eyes beyond a squint, but Eren can work with that. He takes the clock before Levi can even register that he has it, puts it on the floor, and lies down. His hand is still on Levi's shoulder, and he slides it back up to the man's hair. Levi's frowns.

"Did you really wake me up for this?" he grumbles, and Eren would've smiled if his heart wasn't hammering in his chest.

"Levi," he says, but his throat has closed up so the words come out strangled. He swallows and tries again. "Levi?"

"Hmm?" His eyes are closing again. Eren's fingers curl a little tighter and Levi's winces.

"Why're you bleeding?"

Eren sees that it takes a moment to for Levi to understand. And when he does, he opens his eyes again, pulls back and looks at his arms for the longest time. Then he moves away, trembling, sits up and curls his arms around his body. He flinches when Eren moves.

Eren sits up too and is very careful not to touch Levi. He looks ahead at their feet under the covers so he'll have the courage to keep talking. If he looks at Levi's face, he'll be too lost to even think straight.

"I said I'd stay," Eren says, "I'm listening."

Levi's breathing is a little erratic. It pains Eren to sit there and pretend to be calm while Levi's falling apart beside him because of something he won't talk about, but eventually he leans heavily against Eren's side. His head rests awkwardly on Eren's shoulder, and he can feel Levi's sweat through his shirt.

"I told you," he says slowly, his words barely above a whisper, "I told you about...fighting."

Eren nods. Levi fumbles in the dark for his lover's hand. "I thought it...it was just something I could get over." He swallows painfully. "I'm pathetic."

Eren shakes his head but stops himself from saying anything useless like "of course you're not" or "you don't really believe that". "What happened?" he asks instead, and Levi's hand tightens around his.

"I think...no. I did." He stops and Eren squeezes his hand. "I killed her. I couldn't save her. I knew there was a bomb there but I gave the wrong order...and there was a boy she tried to save but they both…" He's breathing too heavily to continue. He lets go of Eren's hand and blindly reaches up to touch the boy's face, put his trembling fingers over his lips. "I never should've joined that war, Eren. I should...I shouldn't have been the one directing her, I should have told someone and not let her go out in the middle of the night and now…"

His hand drops to Eren's shoulder and squeezes, tightly, painfully. Eren can feel Levi breathing heavily against his neck and he gives in and puts his arms around Levi's waist. It's the right thing to do after all, because Levi doesn't flinch away this time. He presses his palm flat on Eren's chest instead, right over his heart. They listen to his heartbeats together until they both calm down.

"You can't change what happened," Eren says eventually. His fingers hover over the scars on Levi's arms. "But you can forgive yourself." He resists adding some pathetic yarn about how Petra wouldn't want him to live like this. Levi's mentioned her before of course- never exactly how she died, but there's always been that haunted look in his eye whenever he mentions her. He saved so many people in his time with the army, which is why they allowed him to go home only stripped of his rank. But there's still the pain that lingered before he became a soldier, made worse by the war.

Before Eren can try to add anything else, Levi's already gone, asleep in a position that's going to be unbearably stiff in the morning. Eren's so tired himself that the most he manages is a vague horizontal slide so they at least don't go to sleep sitting up.

And yet it still hurts when they wake up.

* * *

"But what was with the clock?"

They're watching a movie, or at least attempting to; Levi's sprawled across Eren's stomach and Eren stopped trying to crane his neck to see the computer screen half an hour ago. Levi shushes him even though they've seen the thing at least fifty different times, and Eren waits until it gets to the part where the car disintegrates a second after the kids scramble out of it, and Levi lets him repeat the question.

He doesn't answer straight away, but he doesn't snort at the jokes the way he usually does, so Eren knows he's still thinking about it. It's when the corpses are ambling into the town hall when he speaks.

"It's not nearly the same, but. It reminds me of a heartbeat. When you're not here."

Eren thinks about that. He always wondered why his pulse is the first place Levi's fingers or lips go, why he always grabs his wrist before his hand. Even now, Levi's fingers are absentmindedly trailing circles around the Eren's wrist, over his pulse. As if he constantly needs to remind himself that someone else is still around him and still alive.

Neither of them say anything for the rest of the movie, and Eren tries not to cry at the end like he always does because Levi's going to give him that look. But this time when Levi gives him his withering expression, his face softens. Eren doesn't know what he did for that to happen, but he likes it. Although Levi's head is really heavy, and he says so. Levi snorts and calls him a weakling, but not before he leaves a kiss right under Eren's chin.

It's not all quite fixed, and they both know that. But they're getting there.


End file.
